Ingrid Garner has a story to tell: Her grandmother, Eleanor Ramrath Garner, survived World War II as an American trapped in Nazi Berlin. In “Eleanor’s Story,” Garner adapts her grandmother’s memoir into a play that successfully humanizes a war — making something from the pages of history eminently relatable.

Garner has a low-key style that avoids melodrama or shock value, though she could be a bit more expressive in the pre-war opening segments as she talks about her favorite tree or wanting to marry her older brother (She’s a little girl as the story starts).

The show, too, could use a bit of polish in between segments — a musical cue or blackouts maybe — something that gives theatergoers a moment to let what they’ve heard sink in.

Because often what they have heard deserves contemplation. Garner has collected interesting and telling anecdotes: Being bullied at school for being American — by the teachers, no less — and a first encounter with overt anti-Semitism.

The Fringe Factor: Garner is living proof that her grandmother survived, but that does not make the stories any less nerve-racking. Part of Fringe is hearing about people’s lives, often in unusual circumstances. Eleanor’s story holds the attention because those circumstances seem almost unimaginable.

Curtain Call: When you read reports of how the Holocaust is fading from Americans’ memories, it feels all the more crucial for plays such of this to remind us of how inhuman humans can be.